Kids have a lot of stuff. Toys, clothes, more toys. It seems even worse after a birthday or Christmas. Suddenly your kid has even more toys that need to fit into the house. Storing toys is something that every parent has to address.
While we try to get our kids to donate or throw away broken toys each year, this does not work too well. Each toy that we ask about is a “favorite”. Even if that toy has not been played with for months!
Something that we have tried that seems to work is storing toys in plastic bins. We take a fairly large plastic bin, maybe 1 ” x 2.5″ and fill it with toys. When even more toys start to accumulate, we use more than one bin. We fill the bin with toys of our kid’s choosing. Storing toys like this frees up space for important things like being able to walk around.
When a kid wants a toy that is in the bin, they need to pick another item (or a couple of items) to replace it. By storing toys this way, we’ve managed to reduce the clutter in the house while not getting rid of the “favorite” toys.
Another bonus to storing toys in plastic bins like this is that toys that have grown familiar and stale have the chance to become new again. We can rotate out a toy that has grown dull and bring out a toy that hasn’t been played with for months. Suddenly, the toy from storage is fun to play with again.
We like storing toys in plastic bins this way. It allows us to free up clutter in the house. It also allows us to rotate out toys so that our kids are more entertained by the toys they have.